6. LAYOUT

With my model finally ready to go, it was time to start laying out how to place the camera for each shot. The tricky thing here is that you have to estimate how much time you'll give to each animation, because at this stage your model is only sliding around the scenery in a T-pose. A lot of the specific details of movement was in my head; at this point, the thing I'm focusing on animating is the camera, not the model.

Click on the image below to watch the video.

Riveting stuff, right? But it was important for me to nail down my shots, and I was surprised to see how relatively persistent they remained to the final version. This was also the process that received the most critique: every week we had "weeklies", in which our class would sit down with the teachers and watch everyone's progress up to that point and make suggestions. It was slightly terrifying, but also extremely helpful; without these critique sessions, my whole film would probably still be around a minute overtime (which is a LOT in the animation world) and be full of unnecessary, awkward shots.